The Legacy of Books

 I recently had some of my father's books passed down to me. Not his entire library (he was an avid reader) but a sampling of things it was thought I would enjoy, because I inherited many of my interests from him.

Any of these can be clicked to enlarge, in case you're curious about the titles.

I'm guessing most people have a variety of interests. Some of these change over time and some stay with us for our lifetime. We can pursue them through a variety of means: magazines, clubs, internet content, borrowed books, etc. And then there are the books we collect, the books that make up our personal libraries. 

I can't tell you how much I appreciate that these are print books. I've always been a fan of real books. But when Kindle first came out, I got one. It pushed the popularity of electronic books, so much so that technophiles were saying that digital was the future of books and  print books would soon be obsolete.

I found my Kindle useful for fiction, and I liked the mobility. I could read a book while standing in a long line at the grocery store. But for nonfiction and research, I thought it left much to be desired. It boasted search and note-taking features, but I found these time consuming to use and inconvenient to find things again. I especially missed being able to flip back and forth between passages on several pages. And of course, the device was constantly nagging to be fed, and it was fussy about format. The Kindle will only read mobi formatted books. Other eReaders want different formats. Eventually my Kindle became outdated and obsolete. At that point, all the books I had stored on it were lost to me. That's pretty much when I abandoned digital books.  

My dad's books are part of his legacy to me. They aren't just the outline of his life, i.e. name, dates, places, and major events, rather they document the person he was. A peek into his soul, so to speak. They are a sampling of the things he was interested in, the things he cared about. He listed page numbers in the fly-leafs, underlined passages that spoke to him, and made a few notes in the margins. 

A few of them were my grandparents' books: my grandmother's Gregg Shorthand (1916 revised edition), Applied Mathematics (1939 for a National Defense Training program my grandfather was enrolled in), Child's Christ Tales (1896, a Christmas gift to my 4-year-old grandmother from her mother), and Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey and An Inland Voyage (1916, signed by two of my grandfather's brothers).

All of these are precious to me. They give me a sense of belonging. Rootedness. Groundedness. A sense of my personal heritage. They represent my father's legacy to me. 

What legacy of books will I leave to my children? Gardening, homesteading, permaculture, historical fiction, science fiction, biblical hermeneutics, natural animal care, herbs, historical bibliographies, classical literature, historical farming, traditional skills, DIY, cookbooks, nature identification, food preservation, history, fiber and textile arts. 

Do you have a book legacy to pass on to those behind you? 

The Legacy of Books © 2026 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Southern Style Celtic Stew

 We've had days of lovely spring-like weather this month. It's highly motivating, until the next front pushes through and reminds us that winter is still here. Our winter menus include a lot of soup for lunch and stews for dinner. It was a recent cold weather menu planning that prompted me to try a variation on one of my ancestral cuisine meals - Celtic Lamb Stew. 

The base recipe for that stew makes it really easy to adapt:

• 1 pound meat
• 1 cup legumes
• 1/4 pound chopped nuts
• 1/4 pound butter
• 1 cup onions
• 1 and 1/2 cups greens
• 3 cups liquid
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tbsp mustard seeds

For the original recipe, I offered two variations: a pre-Roman-invasion version and a post-Roman version. My southern style uses ingredients common to the region of the world I live in, the southeastern U.S.

Southern style Celtic stew and yeast-raised cornmeal rolls

Southern Style Celtic Stew

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 cup cowpeas (I used homegrown Ozark Razorback)
• 1/4 pound chopped pecans (our premier southern tree nut)
• 1/4 pound butter
• 1 cup chopped onions
• 1 and 1/2 collard greens (from the greenhouse)
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tbsp mustard seeds

Soak the peas overnight. Next day, discard the soaking water and rinse the peas. Melt half butter in a stew pot and toast nuts. Add remaining butter and onions, and cook for 5 minutes. Add meat and mustard seeds. Brown meat. Add greens and soaked cowpeas, stir till greens are wilted. Add water. Simmer until the peas are tender, about 40 - 45 minutes.

Recipe notes

• Serves 4 as a main course. We got two meals out of it. Usually, I add any leftovers to the soup pot, but there were no leftovers. 
• The nuts add interesting flavor and a hearty texture without being crunchy. 

Yeast-raised Cornmeal Rolls

Skillet cornbread is typically southern, but I was curious to try a yeast-raised version for something different. The cornmeal is homegrown and home milled.

• 1 cup warm water, milk, or whey
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 & 1/2 cup corn flour (finer than corn meal)
• 1 & 1/2 cup flour (I used unbleached)
• 1/4 cup softened butter
• 1/2 tbsp salt

I actually mixed the dough in my bread machine. To do it by hand, add the yeast and sugar to the warm liquid and let proof. Then stir in the flours, salt, and butter and mix. Knead well and let rise until doubled. 

Shape rolls and let rise again. Bake 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve plain or with butter.

Recipe notes

• The other thing that's typically southern about cornbread is to add so much sugar so that it tastes more like cake than bread. Most people love this, but I don't. Unless I'm eating it for dessert, I want my cornbread to taste like corn, especially because cornmeal from homegrown corn is exceptionally tasty. Eating chili or stew with cake doesn't appeal to me. My skillet cornbread contains no sugar, and for this recipe, I used only enough to feed the yeast. 
• This doesn't rise as much as wheat bread dough, but it rises well enough for a good texture.

With our temps gradually creeping upward, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be serving stews and soups. We haven't tired of them yet, but I am looking forward to daily fresh garden salads when growing season arrives.

What about you? Does your menu change with the seasons? Any favorites you'd care to share?

Southern Style Celtic Stew © 2026 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Front Room: Unexpected Repair Job

In my last post, I promised to tell you about our unexpected problem. It was discovered while we were hanging the curtain rods. Dan's ladder suddenly lurched and to our dismay, we saw that the floor was separating from the wall where his ladder stood next to the front register. Yikes!

It isn't especially noticeable without the ladder + Dan's weight on it. But 
if it hadn't been for the ladder incident, we might not have discovered it.

Dan knew what the problem was. He explained that when the old oil heater / air conditioner unit was installed decades ago, the installer knocked out the foundation and then cut duct-shaped sections in the floor joists to make room for ductwork. So there was no support for the floor there. The ladder location plus Dan's weight exposed the problem. 

The logical approach to repair would be to crawl under the house and fix it from underneath. But that presented challenges. One being that the crawl space at the front of the house is quite low. Another is the way the ductwork was installed. It should have been installed with a main trunk down the center of the house and branches to each room. Instead, the installer made a huge loop of ductwork under the house, making it difficult to crawl around under there (especially considering the problem Dan has with his knees). 

The other option was to go through the front porch floor. This is where using my homestead blog as a journal is invaluable. We were able to look at the photos from my 2014 Tearing Into the Front Porch blog post and make a plan.

Dan cut out what will become a trap door to access the sagging floor. He was able to screw two lengths of 2x4 to the sill to support the floor. I don't have a photo of what it now looks like under the house, but here it is from the front room after the register was removed. 

There is a second register in the room under the side windows, but we don't use the HVAC anyway. When we got estimates for installing the new HVAC, every installer insisted that the ductwork would have to be redone. Technically they were correct, but we didn't have the money for all that so we finally found someone who was willing to just install the unit. 

For now, the old register covers the repair job. Maybe someday we can re-do the front room floor plus have new ductwork properly installed, but that's another future project. 

Front Room: Unexpected Repair Job © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Front Room (Almost Done): Window Coverings

The to-do list for finishing the front room is getting shorter and shorter. After the walls were painted and the window trims done, it was time for curtains. For this, I wanted to use two quilt-look bedspreads. I had them on the windows previously, but discovered that, being one piece, they are a bit inconvenient when it came to opening them for light. That was because standard curtain rods have a center support bracket, so I could only push the two edges of the quilt to the center. That just didn't work well for me. 

Dan suggested "the kind that open with a pulley cord." I remembered my mother had those when I was a kid with pinch pleat draperies, but I couldn't remember what they were called. A quick search with that description and Brave browser AI told me these are traverse rods. (And that's noteworthy because it's the extent of my AI usage. I like Brave AI because it documents its information sources). 

Traverse rods are quite updated compared to the ones my mother had. There's no longer a pull cord, rather the curtains are either opened by hand or with a "wand" (which looks like a mini blind wand). Of the wand models, one can choose left, right, or center draw. Hanging choices are ceiling mount or wall mount. Here's the link to the ones I bought for a close up view.

We went with the wall mount option to suit the size of the quilts. 

side window

I can easily push the quilt to either side to let in the light.

Now it's very easy to let in plenty of light for weaving.

front window

My next step ought to be putting the furniture back in place, except we ran into an unexpected problem! More on that next time. 

Front Room (Almost Done): Window Coverings

 © 2026 by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

My Super Duper New Can Opener

 When Dan and I got married, he still had his military issue P-38 can opener.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

I used it ever since, until recently the tip broke off so that it would no longer puncture the can lid. We reckoned his old P-38 was over 40 years old. 

Many cans come with pull-ring lids nowadays, but I still needed a can opener, so I bought a cheap squeeze handle rotary wheel job.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

It lasted for a couple of months before the wheels wouldn't turn when it was applied to the can. But it would still punch the can lid so I used it to start the cut, and then switched to the p-38 to finish removing the lid. 

One day I needed an inexpensive item to make up the difference for free shipping on Amazon. So I took a look at can openers. Some of the newest designs were odd interesting, but many did not look at all practical. Or made for longevity. I think sometimes people have innovative ideas that can't muster practical reality. 

Electric can openers were out, especially the battery powered ones. But I do have an amusing memory of my mother calling her cat by running the electric opener. Said cat always came running, even if no cat food was being opened.

In reading product reviews, I discovered others had the same problem I did with their squeeze handle can opener. The gears just weren't up to more than a couple months of usage. Then I found new P-38s for sale, but wondered about the quality of the steel. Building materials have been cheapened so much over the years that I'm cautious about buying things without seeing them first hand.

Then I saw the Ganji Kankiri

 

Source: Amazon

This is a Japanese can opener (kankiri) which basically works the same as the P-38. Except the blade is larger and heavier, and I loved the hefty sized handle. It wasn't expensive, either.

It felt a little awkward at first but it's easy to use and does an excellent job of opening cans. Some reviewers complained that it cut a somewhat jagged edge, but once I got used to it, I thought it cut a smoother edge than the P-38. I anticipate not needing to buy another can opener for a long, long time.

I never dreamed I'd ever be excited over a can opener, but I do love me some good manual tools. 

My Super Duper New Can Opener © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

New Look For the Masonry Stove

I have one more project update to share with you, this one is for the masonry stove. After we made the adjustments and improvements on it last summer, I wasn't sure that I liked the resulting look of it.

 

The improvements in efficiency were well worth the change in aesthetics, but I was used to the visual variations of the bricks and wasn't sure I liked the solid white. I felt something was needed. Here's what we ended up doing.

The newly painted green alcove matches the thermal curtains I bought last year. I got the cast iron tree silhouettes from Etsy. All in all, I like it better. I liked the brick look best, but this is a good alternative.

New Look For the Masonry Stove © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Painting the Front Room

On our cold, windy, snowy, icy days, I've been painting the front room. Besides the window coverings, painting means this remodeling project is finally almost done. Once the walls are painted, I can finally start putting the room in order and using it again! I have a weaving project in mind and I'm looking forward to getting back to my loom.

The room certainly needed fresh paint. We could see the old layers of paint on the walls when Dan replaced the windows, and mine is it's third paint job in 100 years. And all of them have been green! I chose a green that coordinated with the window quilts and the throw rugs. 

The old paint was glossy, and I find glossy paints don't take new paint well. Or at least new paint will scratch off more easily over the years. I didn't want to use messy paint remover, nor do a dusty job of sanding, so I washed them down with hot water, dish soap, and Bon Ami. Bon Ami is a non-bleach scrubbing powder that works very well and is safer for graywater systems. I rinsed it off with vinegar water. The walls definitely needed a good cleaning and this took the sheen off the old paint too. 

New color on the left, old color on the right, .

The only "oh well" I have is that when Dan installed the cubby units, he attached them to the wall and desk with angle brackets. So I couldn't move the desk to paint behind it. I did the best I could, but if the desk and shelves are ever removed, it will be obvious! But then, I figure whoever comes behind us will likely re-do the walls anyway. Really, the 100-year-old tongue and groove should be replaced with new walls, but that's beyond the scope of our time, energy, and finances at the moment. A future project out there in someday-ville. For now, fresh paint will have to do.

I'm happy with the way it's turning out. The old color was dingy and dull, but this new shade is fresh and cheerful. It improves the room tremendously.

Painting the Front Room © 2026 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Snow, Colder, Easy Winter Window Energy Hack

On the last day of January we got snow, real snow with fluffy snowflakes, not frozen raindrops. Thankfully, it's not as treacherous as ice, except where it hid the thick slippery patches of ice that haven't melted yet. It snowed all day.

Meowy's early morning footprints on the back steps. 

Early morning view of one of the girls' pastures.

The goats sniffed at the snow but had no intention of leaving the barn.

Big Duck came out after Dan filled the ducks' pan with warm water.

The video is a little out of focus, but it's the best I could do with heavy gloves on my hands.

We got a total of four inches of snow. Not a record breaker, but enough for the neighborhood kids to build snowmen to their hearts' content. It was our coldest day so far, with a high of 25°F (-4°C) falling to a nighttime low of 7°F (-14°C. The greenhouse got down to 19°F.)

Wood yard with the boys' pasture in the background

Driveway gate

Back side of the house approaching the greenhouse

Side gate to the front yard

Greenhouse and keyhole garden

Late afternoon sun trying to burn through the clouds

After a walk around the yard, there's nothing nicer than coming back into a wood cookstove warmed kitchen with a pot of soup cooking.

The window idea is one I found on permies.com. Windows (even energy efficient ones) are notorious energy leaks. When you put your hand on the window on a cold day, the glass is colder than the walls. That's why most of mine are covered with thermal curtains. 

The cold air from the windows sinks and is one reason why floors are so cold. The idea here is to install a simple barrier to prevent the cold air from cascading down from the window and further chilling the room. All I did was to take a piece of 3/16 inch foam board, cut two layers 6 inches times the inner width of the window frame, and glue them together. Then I slid them into place, resting on the window sill.

I could immediately feel that the air below the window ledge wasn't as chilly! It didn't magically make the room warmer, but it definitely makes a difference, and without blocking the view or the light. 

I only bought one sheet of foam board, but I took the remaining piece and fitted it to my kitchen sink window.

This window leaks cold worse than the bathroom window, so even one layer of foam board made an immediate difference. A double layer works better, so I'll add a second layer when I get more foam board. I plan to install these in my other windows as well. Even the energy efficient windows don't completely keep out the cold. 

This might be a good time to put in a plug for a really good book because it has an entire chapter on easy ways to stay warm while decreasing your energy bill. The authors call their ideas "luxuriant environmentalism." I did a book review on it a few years back here.

It offers easy solutions for global environmental problems, ideas anyone can implement, from urban renter to rural land owner. These aren't problems that only governments can solve, we can all do something to help. This book focuses on actionable ideas. 

You can get it at permies.com here.

You can get it at Amazon.com here.

We're supposed to be heading toward a warming trend, with the snow and ice melting during the day and refreezing at night. I'm not sure if the winter weather is over, but it will be nice to have a reprieve.

How about you? How are you surviving your weather?

Snow, Colder, Easy Winter Window Energy Hack

© 2026 by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Real Winter Weather

Living in the southeastern U.S., our winters can cover a range of mild to frigid. But we didn't escape the recent winter storm that swept the eastern part of the country. Fortunately for us, it wasn't as bad as they predicted! Here's my photo record of what we got.

We didn't get snow, we got freezing rain.

The ground was covered with ice crystals, while everything else was coated with a layer of ice.

The danger of winter storms here is when trees and power lines are covered in a thick coating of ice. If it gets too heavy, branches come down, knock out power lines, and we lose electricity. Fortunately, it wasn't that bad.

Walking in it was crunchy and slippery, especially on our sloping land.

The wind was bitterly cold. Between that and the strange white stuff on the ground, none of our critters would go outside. Feed and warm water were served in their respective quarters.

Our coldest night was 10°F (-12°C). The greenhouse went down to 18°F (-8°C). My winter veggies are hanging in there, but I'm doubtful my green peppers will make it, even after covering and insulating them for the night.

exterior greenhouse door

solar panels

kale and garlic in the garden

poor daffodils

Things began to melt the day after the storm. Current temps run from above freezing during the day to below freezing at night. Sunny areas are muddy during the day and icy at night. White patches of ice crystals persist where there's shade. The wind is still cold, so we go out for chores and animal checks, but it's mostly indoor time. I'm spending mine painting the ceiling of the front room and planning a weaving project.

Parting shot

Sam

How is everybody else faring in this unwelcome weather? We've got snow in the forecast for Saturday. Looks like winter isn't going to be over anytime soon.

Real Winter Weather © 2026 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com